# We'll always have Walmart! **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 15, 2017, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/well-always-have-walmart/784513 "2017-04-15T17:34:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![mmkt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/cdc98d/32.png) [@mmkt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mmkt)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2017, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/well-always-have-walmart/784513/21 "2017-04-17T00:11:29Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > So you get the benefit of Walmart’s reasonable prices without having to step into a Walmart? (I looked, there’s no fee) > > Sweet. I’ll try it next time I move somewhere a Walmart is close by. Walmarts are awful, it’s basically a reminder that for most people, life is mediocre and then you die. I went into a Walmart on Friday and you are right the atmosphere is awful but I want to get those deals and get the hell out of there as quickly as possible. lol ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2017, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/well-always-have-walmart/784513/22 "2017-04-17T00:12:01Z")
Early in 2016 Walmart announced it was closing hundreds of stores including all 102 of its Walmart Express stores. It’s not all wine and roses. One problem quite a few chain stores ran into was that there business model was growth. Keep adding and adding stores. At some point something goes wrong. Recession, a really stupid CEO, overreaching, etc. A business built solely on growth has problems when it starts to shrink. E.g., Amazon (on the retail side) has been in the grow, grow, grow no matter what mode from day one. If they stopped growing, that unit would be in big trouble. It could start having major issues resulting in higher costs, supply problems, etc. Another competitor could arise. Also, businesses need to be flexible. Kmart grew out of S. S. Kresge’s five-and-dime stores. Once it got competitors nationwide (like Walmart), it tried to figure out new markets. E.g., American Fare and other failed iterations. Bankruptcy and running on fumes now. Walmart has tried new things and failed before. Remember their old music store? Was the 2nd largest online store for a bit (after iTunes). Bailed out, eventually shutting down the DRM servers leaving customers holding the bits. I’m guessing there will be some “super genius” CEO at some point that mortgages the business to expand something and it’ll knock the legs out from under it. Then Walmart stores will go the way of Kmarts. Just smelly piles of junk scattered around. Business declines, some rival takes up the slack. Etc. Look at eBay. It’s the 800 lb gorilla of online auction sites. But their real money now comes from sellers listing But-it-now stuff. Not actual auctions. Those are a headache and there’s no growth. If someone came along and scooped up the auction business away from them, they’d probably be okay in the long run. The big challenge to Amazon, etc.? Alibaba. What if they _really_ enter the US market? Not just those AliExpress folk selling cheap stuff that takes weeks to be delivered. ---
**Author:** ![Unabashed\_Fascist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/c2a13f/32.png) [@Unabashed\_Fascist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unabashed_Fascist)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2017, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/well-always-have-walmart/784513/23 "2017-04-17T20:14:57Z")
Wallmart shall fall! Entropy demands it. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/well-always-have-walmart/784513/24 "2017-04-18T01:01:37Z")
> [@CelticKnot](#): > > 1. Everyday at a big box store, I ask customers if I can help them find something (yes, there are still store employees that do that). Every day, at least one customer tells me “No thanks; I’m just browsing/I haven’t made up my mind/ I’m not sure what I’m looking for.” How will internet shopping work for people like that? If you don’t know for sure what you want, how do you search Amazon for it? Because mostly those customers are lying to you. They do know what they’re looking for; they just want to be able to look without being ‘helped’ by a pushy, commissioned salesman. Possibly just looking at the range of models available, then planning to order it online. ---
**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/well-always-have-walmart/784513/25 "2017-04-18T01:54:08Z")
I’m not a big fan of the Walmart experience, but when I’m on road trips they are extremely handy. They’re likely to have just about anything I’m looking for from groceries to clothing to electronics. They won’t have top-quality brands but I’m willing to trade “good enough” for convenience. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/well-always-have-walmart/784513/26 "2017-04-18T06:42:57Z")
If Amazon and Walmart fail, who will sell me the plastic “ink” and “paper” I need for my futuristic 3D printer? . ---
**Author:** ![Chisquirrel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6bbea6/32.png) [@Chisquirrel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chisquirrel)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/well-always-have-walmart/784513/27 "2017-04-18T12:41:50Z")
> [@CairoCarol](#): > > If Amazon and Walmart fail, who will sell me the plastic “ink” and “paper” I need for my futuristic 3D printer? > > . 3DPrinterInk 'R Us ---
**Author:** ![Jennshark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Jennshark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jennshark)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/well-always-have-walmart/784513/28 "2017-04-18T12:51:48Z")
There was a special on Sears this morning on NPR that made me really nostalgic and a bit sad. I haven’t been to a Sears for years, but the memories of perusing the big 1970s catalogs for hours flooded back. They’re for sure drowning in slow and painful stages. A very cool thing: we live in a house that was ordered from Sears, Roebuck & Company! Modern Home, Model #165, $1248.00 in 1914; it’s still solid as a rock (except for some rotting wood siding, but pretty impressive for 103-y-o). ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/well-always-have-walmart/784513/29 "2017-04-18T18:18:46Z")
> [@Jennshark](#): > > There was a special on Sears this morning on NPR that made me really nostalgic and a bit sad. I haven’t been to a Sears for years, but the memories of perusing the big 1970s catalogs for hours flooded back. > > They’re for sure drowning in slow and painful stages. > > A very cool thing: we live in a house that was ordered from Sears, Roebuck & Company! Modern Home, Model #165, $1248.00 in 1914; it’s still solid as a rock (except for some rotting wood siding, but pretty impressive for 103-y-o). What exactly would you get for ordering the house? Googling reveals what look like regular houses on the outside. Would the walls be pre-fabricated? Did the builders still have to install every shingle? Was all the wood pre-cut? In 1914, how did they even ship something like that? There were not 18 wheel trucks, and it’s hard to see how the dimensions would fit in a train car, nor how they would get the components from the nearest railway station to where your house was coming together. Factory made modular homes seem like a stupidly obvious innovation, and I wish they had taken off. We could live in homes that were objectively designed to be optimal. (as in, designed for utility and not for just looks) They could be made with all kinds of integrated features and be made to be easy to maintain and efficient and more durable. Every 20 years or so, you could design them to be unbolted, then the whole house could be shipped to a disassembly plant somewhere, and get recycled. And just swap in a new one. If the process were highly automated and robotic it could theoretically be cheaper than how we do it now. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/well-always-have-walmart/784513/30 "2017-04-18T18:53:23Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > What exactly would you get for ordering the house? Googling reveals what look like regular houses on the outside. > > Would the walls be pre-fabricated? Did the builders still have to install every shingle? Was all the wood pre-cut? > > In 1914, how did they even ship something like that? There were not 18 wheel trucks, and it’s hard to see how the dimensions would fit in a train car, nor how they would get the components from the nearest railway station to where your house was coming together. From [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears_Catalog_Home): "Precut and fitted lumber, an innovation pioneered by Aladdin, was first offered by Sears in 1916. Prior to 1916, the prospective home builder had to cut their Sears-supplied lumber to appropriate lengths. … Sears’s use of “balloon style” framing systems did not require a team of skilled carpenters, as did previous methods. Balloon frames were built faster and generally only required one carpenter. … “Shipped by railroad boxcar, and then usually trucked to a home site, the average Sears Modern Home kit had approximately 25 tons of materials, with over 30,000 parts.” ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/well-always-have-walmart/784513/31 "2017-04-18T19:09:30Z")
WalMart also figured out you dont need well paid commission salespeople to sell products. Years ago when I worked at WalMart in their “electronics” section selling say tvs and stereos, people would act like I was a commission salesperson and ask for my card. But no. I was a minimum wage worker and the people picked out their own stuff. Whats sad is though that years ago, one could make a good living selling vacuum cleaners, clothes, or tools at Sears. Or Montgomery Wards. But people cared more about the lowest price so they said goodbye to those stores and went to Walmart. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/well-always-have-walmart/784513/32 "2017-04-18T19:16:02Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Whats sad is though that years ago, one could make a good living selling vacuum cleaners, clothes, or tools at Sears. Or Montgomery Wards. But people cared more about the lowest price so they said goodbye to those stores and went to Walmart. There’s nothing sad about it. This is more efficient. Peer reviews from \*unbiased \*peers and unbiased trustworthy reviewers of products are a more trustworthy metric than salesmen. (aka, Amazon reviews made without an incentive and professional unbiased reviewers such as Consumer Reports are much more reliable and accurate than a salesman - and cheaper and more efficient for the broader society) Progress is being made. The _problem_ is that these efficiency improvements have more doubled the GDP of all of America since the 1970s, yet the amount that workers are paid has stayed roughly the same since the 1970s. So out of the products of all of America, basically all of the gains have gone to the rich and _none_ of them have gone to the workers. That’s the problem. ---
**Author:** ![amaguri](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/49beb7/32.png) [@amaguri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amaguri)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2017, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/well-always-have-walmart/784513/33 "2017-04-19T18:12:48Z")
> [@CelticKnot](#): > > 1. Everyday at a big box store, I ask customers if I can help them find something (yes, there are still store employees that do that). Every day, at least one customer tells me “No thanks; I’m just browsing/I haven’t made up my mind/ I’m not sure what I’m looking for.” How will internet shopping work for people like that? If you don’t know for sure what you want, how do you search Amazon for it? Maybe Virtual Reality? It’s not so far-fetched anymore. You’d be missing some of the tactile experience (and even that is becoming closer to reality!) but you could certainly replicate the browsing aspect. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2017, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/well-always-have-walmart/784513/34 "2017-04-19T19:10:07Z")
> [@Corry\_El](#): > > \*and most centuries-old companies do something very simple and traditional like hotels and breweries, few if any general retailers on those lists. [Here’s](http://www.thebay.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/en/thebay) a retail company that was established in 1670. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/well-always-have-walmart/784513.md?page=1)